Blame it on the 2007 Troy outage

Many Capital Region residents were understandably upset after the Dec. 11 ice storm knocked out power to 300,000 customers.

And many were also upset that in the days after the disaster, National Grid couldn’t say exactly when they expected the power to come back on.

In a report filed with the state Public Service Commission last week, National Grid said it didn’t want to mess up like it did when it had to cut power to most of the city of Troy in 2007 following another major storm. Then, city officials were told the power would be out much longer than it actually was.

“As the company learned from the Troy storm and load shed event of 2007, it is imperative that accurate restoration times be used in customer communications,” National Grid said in the report. “Eastern Division staff understood the risk of arbitrarily estimating restoration times and, although slightly later than desired, elected to take the more methodical and accurate approach to providing restoration estimates.”

Larry Rulison

3 Responses

National Grid, as an entity, should be barred from doing business in NYS. They are the most irresponsible & unresponsive public utility ever to operate in New York. I was involved in both the deliberate termination of power in Troy in 2007 when I worked there and I live in a very populated area in Latham which they intentionally left without power for 4 mid-winter days from December 11 to December 15,2008. Can you imagine?? Turning off the power to a whole city without notice because they needed it somewhere else?? Did National Grid even hint at giving us a rebate for the multitude of spoiled food in everyones refrigerator or reimburse us for the 4 days we had to spend big money in a motel to make up for their incompetence?? Absolutely not !!! Their answer was to raise the rates to make up for the 4 days that everyone’s meter wasn’t running. I emailed every television station in NYS, The Governor’s Office, and filed a complaint with the NYS Public Service Commission which I will continue to do every time the power goes out (for any reason) and I urge every citizen to do the same every time the power goes out until National Grid is ran out of town!! I have had it with their electric service unreliability and will file complaints against them even if the lights flicker. This company needs to go…and NOW!!

Farndog, Did you ever hear of a thunder and rain storm in the summer? If I recall their was a devastating thunder and rain storm that took place the day before the power was cut to Troy. You are right, it was sunny and 85 after the winds and the rain subsided, although their was quite a bit of destruction left in its wake. I suspect that the power was cut to that area in order to protect other lines and equipment from experiencing damaging overloads, which would have caused extended outages. So what’s your story?